The Levels Of Carbon Dioxide

Over the years Carbon Dioxide has been significantly increasing from human activity. CO2 has a concentration of about 400 ppmv (parts per million volume). Its concentration in the atmosphere was about 280 ppmv before the Industrial Revolution, now it has increased immensely to about 380 ppmv in 2006. Many have said Carbon Dioxide has been the main reason or cause of global warming; saying that if we produce too much of this greenhouse gas it can create a global climate change. Even though carbon dioxide affects the temperature of the atmosphere it also affects the acidity of water specifically in the ocean.

G., Cong-Qiang, L., WeiDong, Z., Minella, M., Vione, D., Kunshan, G., & ... Hiroshi, S. (2016). Reviews and Syntheses: Ocean acidification and its potential impacts on marine ecosystems. Biogeosciences, 13(6), 1767. doi:10.5194/bg-13-1767-2016

Carbon Capture and Sequestration is the process of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide by injecting the compound back in the ground. The process takes 3 steps:

The Effect of Temperature on the Solubility of Carbon Dioxide in Water under Constant Pressure

A bottle of soda is full of carbon dioxide. The bubbles stay stuck in the liquid until the bottle is opened. When you drop an item into a bottle of soda, bubbles form on the surface of the object that was dropped in. This Process is called, “nucleation.” Nucleation is the process that happens in the formation of a crystal from a solution, a liquid, or a vapour.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, mankind has slowly increased the total greenhouse gas emissions that enter the atmosphere. Over time, this pollution began to add up. Now planet Earth is struggling to maintain its health with the combined forces of global warming and ocean acidification looking to bring demise. From all portions of the world, troubling changes are emerging in the chemistry of our oceans’ waters. The oceans takes in around a quarter of the Carbon Dioxide that mankind releases into the atmosphere every year, so as atmospheric Carbon Dioxide levels rise, so do the

“How acidification threatens ocean from the inside out: Carbon dioxide emissions are making the oceans more acidic, imperiling the growth and reproduction of species from plankton to squid”, by Marah J. Hardt and Carl Safina addresses the dangers of increasing acidity in the ocean caused by carbon dioxide. Hardt, a research scientist and writer, is the founder of Ocean Ink. Safina, an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University, is the founding president of the Blue Ocean Institute.

Since the industrial revolution, anthropogenic inputs of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere have increased dramatically. Concentrations in the atmosphere have risen 40% from 1750 to 2011, reaching record highs of 390.5 ppm (Stocker, et al., 2013). Due to this, the amount of dissolved CO2 in the oceans has also increased causing acidification of the oceans which can have several effects, mainly on calcifying organisms. Climate change has also influenced the stratification of the oceans due to density changing affecting nutrient distribution. So far, although a number of methods have been explored, there have been no solutions that don’t have their own issues.

Definition of CO2 = which means it is one carbon atom bonded to two oxygen atoms.

Here is the carbon cycle from the view of a carbon atom innocently attached to two oxygen atoms as a molecule of carbon dioxide:

Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe and is the building block of life on earth. On earth, carbon circulates through the land, ocean, and atmosphere, creating what is known as the Carbon Cycle. This global carbon cycle can be divided

Changes in CO2 are affecting us and our environment in many ways. the most predominant effect of carbon dioxide changes is on the weather and oceans. Unpredictable heat waves are occurring in unforeseen parts of the world (i.e. Europe) and global temperatures as a whole are rising. The rise in the temperatures can not only affect us but the flora and fauna around us. With hotter temperatures, some plants and animals may be unable to adjust which would result in a chain reaction. Heat is affecting the oceans as well and many long standing glaciers or ice shelves to melt and alter the oceans temperature, levels and salinity. These, resultantly, are causing disruptions to the thermohaline conveyor and are effecting islands or seaside town as the water level

Carbon dioxide is one of the major greenhouse gases, and is one of the most common gases found in the earth’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere in mass amounts by human activities and then absorbed by our oceans. The main way that carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere is by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Increased energy composition and with the industrialization age, beginning in the 18th century, has led to a drastic spike in the burning of fossil fuels and therefore the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The main emitters of carbon dioxide are cars, airplanes, and factories

According to Ocean Portal, “in the past 200 years alone, ocean water has become 30 percent more acidic”. The rapid growth of acidity within the oceans is dramatically impacting ecosystems- even the shells of animals are disintegrating in the acid contaminated seawater.

Ocean acidification is happening throughout the oceans at this very moment. Ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution, excess amounts of carbon dioxide have been released to the atmosphere. The ocean absorbs around a quarter of the carbon dioxide released every year, so as the amount of CO2 increases in the air, so does the amount of CO2 in the ocean. Scientists, at first thought this was beneficial to the environment as the ocean was removing greenhouse gas from the atmosphere; however, it slowly changed the chemistry of the oceans. The increase of carbon dioxide in the oceans led them to become more acidic, which affected the marine ecosystems. The PMEL Carbon Program monitored the oceans for three decades and they recently revealed how carbon dioxide affected the coral reef systems in the North Pacific